Emotional dysregulation in psychosis – proof of concept in healthy controls

Objectives:
Psychosis symptoms occur in around 1-2% of the population during their lifetime. Various psychosis symptoms relate to a disturbed perception and regulation of emotions. Previous research indicates that emotional dysregulation may form a distinct psychosis symptom dimension that is linked to aberrant function and structure of the limbic system and its cortico-basal ganglia and cortico-cortical connections. However, the nature of emotional dysregulation in psychosis has not been studied extensively yet. Therefore, we aim to investigate affect as a dimension and its association with neural activation in limbic brain structures in psychosis patients as well as in healthy subjects. As a first step, we analysed preliminary data to investigate our self-developed task.
Methods Neural activation patterns were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from 12 healthy controls. During fMRI examination, we used a specifically developed face perception task. The presented stimuli were short animations of faces that varied in certain characteristics: gender (male, female), aesthetic (high, low), head movement (up, down) and gaze direction (direct, averted). Subsequently, all face stimuli were rated with regard to gender, health, trustworthiness, friendliness, attractiveness & dominance.

Results/Conclusion:
During the perception of the face animation, there was predominantly increased activity in face processing areas (i.e. fusiform gyrus) and decreased activity in other face processing areas (i.e. lingual gyrus, superior temporal gyrus) and limbic areas (i.e. posterior cingulate). More data and further investigations are required to investigate the affect domain in detail. Furthermore, comparison with psychosis patients might help find the underlying psychopathology of psychosis and therefore improve future prevention, diagnostic and treatment options.